Music And Movies

In this part of the series, we will examine a main aspect of MS's singing: her brilliant neravals. I have always enjoyed MS's neravals more than any other artists for the following reasons: her ability to create great tension, unparalleled use of vocal dynamics, outstanding diction and the resplendent raga that emerges during the neraval. Not to mention the other key factor that draws us to her neravals: the artha bhava and the emotive appeal of her voice.  Her neravals are not only about exploring the raga, which she does effectively, but also exploring the emotion hidden in the lyrics. Of letting us experience or at least glimpse what could have gone through the composers mind and heart when they composed those words. The elation they may have felt, the bhakti bhava that would have taken hold of them, their own surrender to the supreme being. The neraval brings for all these images to our mind, for MS loses herself in the raga and the lyrics and yet, as a master musician, she...

  In this post, I will take up two Syama Sastry krithis sung by MS Subbulakshmi.  The greatness of Syama Sastry (as well as his two contemporaries) is that he could take up what many consider a 'minor' raga and compose a krithi of great seriousness and grandeur in that raga. For example, Ahiri is considered to be a 'minor' raga, in the sense that it does not give much scope of kalpana of an artist and has limited prayogas. Yet, Syama Sastry created a gem of a krithi in this raga, 'mayamma,' which has gravitas and oozes karuna rasa. (Dikshitar too took up this raga and created a mammoth Kamalamba krithi, while Tyagaraja created the brilliant 'adaya sri.') Similarly, Syama Sastry took up another raga with limited scope, Punnagavarali, and created a 'heavy' krithi, 'kanaka saila viharini'. We will now hear both these krithis in the voice of MS. First, the Ahiri krithi, 'mayamma.' In this recording you get MS singing a slokam from Mee...